Category Archives: US News

Jim Jordan will vote for Steve Scalise to be House speaker, source says – live

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Jim Jordan plans to vote for the man who beat him, a source with direct knowledge tells the Guardian

Several former Ohio State University wrestlers are voicing their opposition towards Republican representative Jim Jordan’s speaker candidacy.

The former students have accused Jordan of ignoring sexual abuse and failing to protect them from a sexual predator while he was the team’s assistant coach.

“The first order of business under speaker Steve Scalise is going to be bringing a strong resolution expressing support for Israel. We’ve got a very bipartisan bill … ready to go right away to express our support for Israel.

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Republicans to introduce resolution to ‘rid the House of George Santos’

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New York lawmakers aim to expel the accused fraudster, who faces new charges under a superseding federal indictment

New York Republicans in the US House on Wednesday moved to expel one of their own: George Santos, the serial fabulist and accused fraudster who faces new charges under a superseding federal indictment.

“Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster George Santos,” the GOP congressman Anthony D’Esposito said in a post on social media.

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Former NFL player Sergio Brown taken into custody after mother’s death

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  • Sergio Brown was reportedly deported from Mexico
  • Myrtle Brown was found dead near home in Chicago

The former NFL player Sergio Brown has been taken into custody after the death of his mother in September.

Police in San Diego said he was held after entering the United States from Mexico on Tuesday. He is awaiting extradition to Maywood, Illinois, where the body of his mother, Myrtle, was found near her home last month. Police had issued a warrant for first-degree murder after her death was ruled a homicide.

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Supreme court conservatives appear skeptical South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters

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Court hears redistricting case after lower court ruled Republicans had unlawfully moved 30,000 votes out of a congressional district

The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical on Wednesday that South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters when it redrew one of the state’s congressional districts to make it friendlier to the GOP.

During two-hours of oral argument on Wednesday, the court’s conservative justices aggressively poked holes in a three-judge panel’s ruling earlier this year finding that Republicans had unlawfully moved around 30,000 Republican voters out of South Carolina’s first congressional district to make it more Republican. Chief Justice John Roberts, a key swing vote on the court, seemed unconvinced by the evidence the lower court had accepted, saying at one point the challengers were asking the court to embrace arguments that “would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisdprudence”.

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Birkenstock shares open below offer price in US stock market debut

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Shoemaker lands on NYSE with $8.3bn valuation but analysts warn public debut comes amid difficult market conditions

Shares in Birkenstock have opened 11% below their offer price on the company’s US stock market debut, valuing the German shoemaker at $8.3bn as investors bet there was less mileage in consumer demand for its cork-soled sandals, which have become an unlikely fashion success story.

On Tuesday evening the footwear firm priced its shares at $46 ahead of the first day of trading in New York, where it is using the symbol “BIRK”. That figure was in the middle of the $44 to $49 guidance provided last week and valued the company at $8.6bn (£7bn).

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Caroline Ellison testifies Sam Bankman-Fried told her to illegally divert FTX funds

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Former Alameda Research CEO says ex-boyfriend largely blamed her for company’s financial collapse

Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial entered its sixth day on Wednesday with more testimony from Caroline Ellison, his ex-girlfriend and the former CEO of the hedge fund associated with his collapsed cryptocurrency exchange. She testified that, during last year’s cryptocurrency crash, Bankman-Fried directed her to illegally appropriate FTX customers’ money.

When downturn began in May 2022, Ellison worried that the walls could soon come down on Alameda Research. Many of the hedge fund’s lenders had open-term loans, which meant they could call them – and ask for their money back – at any point. The crash left Alameda in the lurch after the value of its crypto assets evaporated. The two had broken up in early 2022. Ellison said she was avoiding social settings and one-on-one conversations with him when the crash began.

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Republicans nominate Steve Scalise to replace McCarthy as House speaker

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Scalise defeats Jim Jordan by 113 votes to 99 but falls short of threshold needed to be elected speaker on House floor

House Republicans nominated Steve Scalise to be the next speaker on Wednesday, a week after the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy. But a handful of objections to Scalise’s nomination left House Republicans unable to move to a final floor vote, making it unclear when a new speaker might be elected.

By a vote of 113 to 99, Scalise, currently the second-ranking House Republican, defeated a challenge from congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the judiciary committee and a far-right firebrand.

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Zelenskiy fears Middle East conflict could hit military aid to Ukraine

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President warns of ‘dangerous situation’ for his country as western attention shifts to Israel after Hamas attack

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel and US politics could threaten military support for his country, as he made a surprise visit to Brussels where Nato defence ministers are meeting.

“I want to be honest with you, of course it is a dangerous situation for people in Ukraine,” he said on his first visit to Nato headquarters since Russia’s 2022 invasion, making an in-person plea for continued assistance at a time when turbulence in the US Congress threatens to disrupt aid for Kyiv and the world’s attention is drawn to the crisis unfolding in the Middle East.

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Top Mexican court to give new life to controversial Trump-era border policy

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‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which forces people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while US claims are processed, set to be revived

The Mexican supreme court is poised to give new life to a controversial US-Mexico border policy at a time when both countries are looking for ways to slow the flow of migrants heading north.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, is a Trump-era policy that forced people seeking asylum in the US to wait out their legal proceedings in Mexico for months or even years. The government of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador accepted the arrangement and allowed thousands of asylum seekers to be sent back to the country from the US.

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Abortions in North Carolina drop by 30% in wake of new restrictions, data shows

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Nearby states didn’t see similar increases, suggesting those denied abortions in the state are self-managing, or going without

Abortions in North Carolina fell by more than 30% after the state enacted new abortion restrictions on 1 July, including a 12-week abortion ban, new data released on Wednesday by the Guttmacher Institute shows.

North Carolina abortion clinics performed more than 4,200 abortions in June, but just 2,920 abortions in July. Nearby states did not see a comparable surge in abortions, suggesting that patients denied abortions in North Carolina had to self-manage their own – or simply went without.

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Luxury rooms and a swim-up bar: hotel with funding from Dominica’s golden passport scheme

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Former Afghan spy chief among those to gain citizenship though investment in Caribbean island

Nestled in a valley formed by an extinct volcano on the Caribbean island of Dominica, the InterContinental Cabrits resort has 101 luxurious rooms overlooking an emerald bay. Its website invites guests to “explore and unwind in paradise while discovering the pristine island”.

But waterfront views and a swim-up rum bar are not the hotel’s only attraction: for the wealthy investors who helped fund the project, it was also a route to another nationality.

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Kari Lake, Trump ally and election denier, announces Senate bid in Arizona

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Republican who lost state governor’s race but never conceded has challenged her defeat in court, so far unsuccessfully

Kari Lake, the Republican candidate who lost the race for Arizona governor but never conceded her loss, announced a run for US Senate in the western state Tuesday.

A former TV news anchor, Lake made her move into politics by making repeated false claims about elections. She aligned closely with former president Donald Trump and has been floated as a potential running mate for Trump, who once praised Lake for her ability to constantly bring up election fraud.

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Two US House Republicans make their bid for the speaker’s gavel

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Party members will decide between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan on Wednesday by secret ballot

Prominent Republican party members Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan made their pitches for the powerful role of speaker of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday amid mounting pressure from a war in the Middle East and another looming government shutdown. Lawmakers exiting a closed-door forum said neither Scalise, the House majority leader, nor Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, will have a clear advantage when Republicans begin to vote for a nominee by secret ballot on Wednesday.

“We’ve got two good leaders within our party, with good perspectives on where the party needs to go and an understanding and an emphasis on reuniting the party,” Mike Garcia told reporters. But before voting for a candidate on Wednesday, Republicans will have to decide whether to keep internal disagreements behind closed doors by requiring any nominee to win 217 Republican votes, enough to elect the next speaker on the House floor over Democratic opposition. Current rules require only a simple majority. “The first order of business is figuring out a rules change that works for the conference,” said congresswoman Kat Cammack.

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More charges for George Santos: stealing donors’ identities and credit cards

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New 23-count indictment accuses Republican congressman of charging contributors’ credit cards to fund his bank account

Federal prosecutors added major allegations to the indictment charging the House Republican George Santos with fraud and lying about his campaign finance disclosures, presenting evidence that he stole donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards without their knowledge.

The new charges, revealed in a superseding indictment returned on Tuesday by a grand jury in New York, increases the legal peril for the embattled congressman, given that his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, last week pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States.

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US navy sailor pleads guilty to accepting $15,000 in bribes from China

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In plea deal, Wenheng ‘Thomas’ Zhao admits providing information on exercises, operational orders and blueprints

A US navy sailor pleaded guilty on Tuesday to accepting nearly $15,000 in bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for photographs of unclassified private US military information, according to court papers.

Petty Officer Wenheng “Thomas” Zhao, 26, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and receiving a bribe, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

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Californians will be able to delete all personal online data with first-in-US law

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Delete Act signed by governor Gavin Newsom strengthens existing regulations so users will be able to scrub info from a single page

In a victory for privacy advocates and consumers, the California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would enable residents to request that their personal information be deleted from the coffers of all the data brokers in the state.

The bill, SB 362, otherwise known as the Delete Act, was introduced in April 2023 by the state senator Josh Becker in an attempt to give Californians more control over their privacy. Californians already have a right to request their data be deleted under current state privacy laws, but it requires filing a request with each individual company.

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White House condemns car-ramming incident at Chinese consulate in San Francisco

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Unnamed driver who crashed car into consulate building was shot by police and later died in hospital

The White House has denounced the violent incident at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco that began with a car crashing into the building and ended with police shooting the driver, who later died at a hospital.

“We condemn this incident and all violence perpetrated against foreign diplomatic staff working in the United States,” Adrienne Watson, White House National Security Council spokeswoman, to the Associated Press.

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California becomes first state to ban use of ‘excited delirium’ as cause of death

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State prohibits the pseudoscientific diagnosis authorities have frequently cited to justify killings at hands of law enforcement

California has become the first state to ban the use of “excited delirium” as a cause of death, prohibiting the pseudoscientific diagnosis that authorities have frequently cited to justify killings at the hands of law enforcement.

Excited delirium – a term rejected by major medical groups, including the American Medical Association – suggests that people can develop “superhuman strength” due to drug use. Medical examiners and coroners have argued that the condition caused victims of brutal police force to struggle and collapse from cardiac arrest, essentially excusing the role of officers who were holding them down, choking or suffocating them.

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US prisoners who did not consent to ivermectin Covid treatment win payout

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Prisoners in Arkansas settle lawsuit for $2,000 each after accusing Washington county detention center of ‘medical experimentation’

The four Arkansas prisoners who sued their jail over allegations they knowingly prescribed them ivermectin to treat Covid without consent have settled the dispute for $2,000 each.

The quartet previously said they were administered the drug as a form of “medical experimentation” without prior informed consent or knowledge of the drug’s contents and potential side effects. Instead, the doctor at the jail told them they received “vitamins, antibiotics, and/or steroids”.

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Biden says Americans among hostages in Gaza and reaffirms support for Israel – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For our latest reporting on Israel-Hamas war, you can read our live coverage here.

Special counsel for the federal January 6 case has also requested that Trump be restricted from doing juror research and publishing the identities of jurors, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

The request is, in part, because of Trump’s previous use of social media to “attack others”, argued the special counsel.

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